1. Field of the Invention
The present invention provides a process and an apparatus for: (1) comprehensively searching the Internet for uses of trademarks, tradenames, celebrity and/or famous names; (2) comprehensively searching the Internet for potentially infringing uses of trademarks in domain names and other Web page content as it relates to homonym and phonetic equivalents; (3) comprehensively searching the Internet for potentially infringing uses of trademarks, tradenames, celebrity and/or famous names as it relates to homonyms and phonetic equivalents; and (4) comprehensively searching the Internet for uses of trademarks, tradenames, celebrity and/or famous names as they relate to images.
2. Description of the Related Art
The rapid rise of the Internet has created an explosion of information and commercial speech and with it an increase of intellectual property issues, particularly trademark issues. The earliest form of this issue was (and is) the conflict between domain name rights and trademark rights. Under our present system of registration, any party (“Registrant”) can register with InterNIC (a federal government organization established to register the domain name database) to own any domain name, regardless of trademark ownership, affiliation or association with such name. As a result, Registrants would register hundreds of domain names with InterNIC with the primary goal of selling these same names back to the individuals and/or companies that actually own the same registered trademark. These types of Registrants have been referred to as “Cybersquatters”. While a loose mechanism exists in the form of a dispute resolution policy to dispute the “land rush” domain name claims, there still is a need to understand and monitor how trademark rights (either registered in a particular country or based upon common law rights) are being enforced and used on the Internet.
The Internet is mostly comprised of, among other things, the Web, Newsgroups, and FTP. The Web is comprised mostly of Web pages that are constructed using HTML. This language is written using codes or tags which allow a Web page to be viewed in a coherent or logical fashion. This is also the programming language that allows a user to “jump” or “hyperlink” from one Web page to another with the click of the mouse. These codes or tags are hidden from view from the individual user viewing the Web page. Also hidden from view are image tags, hidden text, titles and URLs of the Web page. The reason the user does not see this hidden tag, text, title and URL is so that the user can interface with the Web in a “point and click” fashion. Presently, there are over 500 million Web pages on the Internet and this number is growing exponentially each year.
Search engines (e.g., Yahoo!, Lycos, Infoseek, etc.) are Internet portals that catalog Web sites on the Internet in a “search, store and retrieve fashion”. First, the search engine searches or “crawls” the Internet and gathers available Web pages on the Internet. The Web pages are then stored and cataloged in that particular search engines' database based on certain criteria (i.e., how frequent keywords appear in either the hidden text, text, meta-tag, title or URL of the Web page). This function enables the search engine to then retrieve a relevant indexed Web page when a keyword query is entered by an end user. Search engines determine relevancy by giving different values to the above criteria (i.e., one search engine may index Web pages in accordance with how many times a keyword appears in the hidden text of a Web page while another search engine may index its Web pages in accordance with how many times a keyword appears in the text of a Web page). This is why when a keyword is entered on one search engine, this search engine may return results and rank Web sites differently than on other search engines. Some search engines also rank other Web Sites based on criteria such as link popularity (i.e. how many Web Sites are linking to that particular Web Site based on a certain keyword). Drawing large amounts of Internet traffic is the primary goal of most if not all Web sites. It is therefore critical that a Web site be easily located and be ranked as high as possible on an end user's search result list.
Companies and individuals have taken advantage of these programmed searches performed by search engines by inserting registered trademarks, tradenames, celebrity and/or famous names as meta-tag keywords or as hidden words within the Web page itself. In addition to hidden text or words within the Web page itself, a Web site may also contain registered trademarks, tradenames, celebrity and/or famous names in the URL or the title of the Web page, and may contain a reference to an image (in the form of a trademark, tradename, celebrity and/or famous name), which image can be viewed by the end user. By using the registered trademarks, tradenames, celebrity and/or famous names in the hidden text, meta-tags, titles, URLs, and image text, third-party Web sites are able to cleverly draw traffic away from authorized Web pages. For example, assuming a search engine indexes its Web pages in accordance with how frequent a keyword appears in the meta-tag of a Web page and assuming a registered trademark that is owned by party A is listed in a meta-tag numerous times in an unrelated Web site run by party B, it is more than likely that if an unknowing user of the Internet enters a query on a standard search engine seeking all Web sites related to that particular trademark, then, the search report will return a list of Web sites with the unrelated site of party B as the top site among such Web sites. This result confuses the end user in that he or she believes that the first listed Web site of party B may, in fact, be endorsed or associated to party “A”, the actual owner of the registered trademark.
As discussed above, search engines typically index Web sites in their database in accordance with several factors, including, but not limited to, the frequency of the number of keywords appearing in the hidden programming code and text of a Web site. Web site programmers take advantage of this indexing method by the search engines by programming their Web site's HTML source code to include irrelevant keywords in their Web site's title, meta-tags, text, and hidden text. As a result, a keyword search query entered into a search engine may yield results that place the irrelevant site higher on the list of search results than the company's authorized site which the user actually desires to find. This result can divert valuable traffic away from the authorized site.
The need to draw high levels of Internet traffic to one's Web site has resulted in the practice of “Spamdexing”. This is a technique used by Web site owners to bring their Web site to the top of a list of search results. The practice involves repeating keywords over and over in text usually at the top of a Web page and/or at the bottom of a Web page in very small letters. It also involves repeating keywords in meta-tags, addresses, hidden text, titles or URLs. These keywords are frequently registered trademarks. If a Web site is able to successfully “spamdex” its Web site by the use of unauthorized trademarks, it can draw higher traffic to its Web site. Given such practices as “spamdexing” and other techniques using registered trademarks, tradenames, celebrity and/or famous names to draw Internet traffic to third-party Web sites, there is a need in the art to provide a means for enforcing trademark rights within the whole Internet.